Blue Jays Snag Soriano, but Pay a Heavy Price

Hey, I thought the Blue Jays were selling! Apparently not, or at least only kind of. Barely 12 hours after sending Kevin Gausman to Chicago, Toronto GM Ross Atkins as replenished his team’s strategic splitter reserve by acquiring José Soriano from the Angels in exchange for three prospects: shortstop Arjun Nimmala, outfielder Eddie Micheletti Jr., and pitcher Angel Rivero.

The Blue Jays are eight games under .500, 13.5 games out of the division lead and 4.5 games out of the second AL Wild Card, with five teams to climb over before they reach the Guardians. They came into Deadline Day with a 5.2% chance of making the playoffs. I’m as gung ho about going for it as the next guy, but that’s not a position from which you want to be trading prospects for big league talent.

But this move is totally in keeping with the Blue Jays’ direction as a franchise. They’re a big-market team coming off the closest championship near-miss in the history of the World Series. They have a top-five payroll and nine players locked into eight-figure salaries through the 2028 season. That’s not counting the numerous core players (Ernie Clement, Louis Varland, Addison Barger, Trey Yesavage, etc.) who are under team control through arbitration at least that long.

That list now gains one more member: Soriano, who is in his first arbitration season now. The 27-year-old will remain under team control through 2028.

Three months ago, Soriano looked like the best pitcher in baseball, as he posted a 0.84 ERA across seven starts March and April. Sure enough, he regressed over the ensuing few months, but he has a 3.95 ERA over his past eight starts, and a 3.21 ERA (with a 2.38 FIP) over his past five.

The Angels have a systemic pitching development quirk: They produce a ton of guys who throw hard, but none of them can strike anyone out. Soriano is probably the best of this crop, depending on the malevolence of the spirit possessing Reid Detmers at any given moment. Among pitchers who have thrown at least 100 innings as starters over the past three seasons, Soriano is 10th out of 218 in four-seamer velocity, less than half a mile per hour from the top five. He also throws a sinker at equal velocity.

But in that same cohort (of 221 pitchers; three of them don’t throw a four-seamer) Soriano is 105th in strikeout rate. He also issues a ton of walks, leaving him 163rd in K-BB%.

The eternal attraction of Soriano is that combination of velocity and a nasty low-90s splitter. Any pitching coach with a pulse is going to look at Soriano and mutter an epithet beyond “I can fix him.” Namely, “I can turn him into Paul Skenes.”

Perhaps nowhere is this truer than Toronto, the splitter capital of North America. Blue Jays starters have led the league in splitter usage percentage for three years running. Yes, Gausman has a lot to do with that, but don’t forget Yesavage.

I like Soriano as a medium-term bet not just because of the tantalizing potential he showed in the first month of this season, but because he has an extremely high floor as well. Let’s say Soriano continues just as he has to this point in his career. He’s very durable, and he throws enough groundballs (a league-leading 65.3% last season) to make up for his lack of strikeouts. Soriano, accordingly, keeps the ball in the yard. In 447 career innings, he has allowed just 36 home runs. Zack Littell gave up that same number in 186 2/3 innings last year alone, and he made a playoff start.

Gausman has been so good over his tenure in Toronto that I don’t want to anoint Soriano as his heir presumptive. But Soriano will take that spot in Toronto’s rotation, and he’ll be useful should the Jays make good on that remote chance of getting back into the Wild Card race. From there, he’ll give Toronto two more seasons of at least reliable no. 4 starter production.

Soriano had been in trade rumors all summer, what with the Angels in their perpetual state of baseball purgatory. I get why the Jays wanted him, and I think he’s a good organizational fit.

But damn, Toronto gave up a ton to get this guy.

Nimmala was the 20th pick in the 2023 draft, and one of the more famous high school prospects in his class. The son of immigrants from Andhra Pradesh in India, he learned cricket first, but in high school he switched to baseball, as any sufficiently large, coordinated teenage Floridian does. The possibility of Nimmala becoming the first Indian-American baseball star was then (and remains now) a fascinating human interest story.

On the field, Nimmala was a wiry 6-foot in his draft year, but like Carlos Correa at the same age, you could tell he wasn’t going to stay wiry for long. Maybe this 170-pound 17-year-old would grow too big to stay at shortstop, and his high school strikeout numbers were concerning. But Nimmala was an explosive hitter, and as the youngest player taken in the first 86 picks, he had plenty of projection left.

Fast-forward three years and Nimmala has projected quite a bit. Still only 20 years old, he’s hitting .279/.355/.451 at Double-A, where he’s the best part of four years younger than the average player. No one will ever accuse Nimmala of being Luis Arraez, but he’s gotten his strikeouts under control, with a 22.7% strikeout rate against a 12.5% walk rate across three minor league levels this year.

Nimmala is growing into above-average-to-plus power, and at least for the time being, he’s sticking at shortstop. The swing-and-miss risk will remain — it’s the kind of thing he’ll have to prove at every level up to and including the majors — but Brendan Gawlowski put a 50 FV grade on Nimmala. With Yesavage’s graduation from prospect status, he became Toronto’s top prospect, and the no. 44 global prospect.

Nimmala is the bulk of the return here; neither Rivero nor Micheletti made Brendan’s systemwide ranking back in January, though both were honorable mentions. Micheletti is one of those older Double-A guys I was just referring to; he has 14 homers in 93 games with good strikeout and walk numbers. But he’s a limited athlete whose big league future — if he has one at all — is as a backup corner outfielder with some pop.

Rivero, on the other hand, has had a very good 2026, according to Brendan. The 19-year-old graduated from the DSL to the stateside complex league this season, and he got some decent results: a 2.36 ERA and a 28.7% strikeout rate. Stats at that level are less useful than a scouting report, of course. Rivero is a little guy for a pitcher — listed at 5-foot-11, 172 pounds — but he’s a good athlete. He sits 93-95 and touches 97, and is a smooth, fluid mover with very good fastball command.

The secondary pitches are still coming; the best of them is a mid-70s 12-to-6 curveball. He also throws a low-80s slider with horizontal break, but his feel for spin is good overall. He had previously thrown a changeup, but that pitch hasn’t come along and he’s throwing it less. There’s probably less physical projection remaining than with your typical teenager, but it’s a decent fastball-breaking ball combination with encouraging command and athleticism. A likely reliever in anything other than a best-case scenario, Rivero has enough starter potential that the Angels should keep him in the minor league rotation as long as possible.

I say this as a Soriano fan: This is a lot to give up for a pitcher with a career 3.72 ERA and 3.79 FIP in more than 400 career innings, even if he does throw hard with intriguing components to his game. I get why the Blue Jays wanted him, and having two extra years of team control makes it impossible to compare his price to what Gausman (who went for pocket change) or Freddy Peralta brought back.

But team control for non-elite pitchers is, for my money, the most overrated trade commodity. Especially because a contender that traded for Soriano now would value the next two months and the ensuing playoffs almost as if it were a full season. The Blue Jays, absent a 1-in-20 half-court lob, aren’t getting that value. Which means they were willing to pay more for two years of Soriano than other teams were willing to pay for three.

The Angels’ involvement complicates the analysis. In order for Atkins and Toronto to look foolish down the line, Nimmala and Rivero — both of whom have benefited enormously from the Jays’ excellent strength training program — will need to reach their potential. That’s less likely now that they’re in a system with a much worse development track record. But if the Jays find themselves in need of a shortstop in the next three years, the loss of Nimmala will loom large.

In the end, the Jays got their guy, but they paid a steep price to make that happen. I hope they know what they’re doing.